


Hearthwife: Act I, Pre-Cana

by Syberina5



Series: The Episcopissa Cycle [1]
Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:46:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 14,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28159995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: In Which Things Get Disgustingly Domestic, Fast
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Series: The Episcopissa Cycle [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2062989
Comments: 29
Kudos: 60





	1. I.i

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I had a women’s history professor use the term “hearthwife” nearly two decades ago; apparently that wasn’t really the term—despite that it is deep in my psyche—and the internet still doesn’t really seem to know what I am talking about. However, “focaria” for “servant, cook, or housekeeper,” or “hearth-mate”—also corrupted to “fornicaria” (promiscuous housekeeper)—“sometimes used to describe a priest’s lover,” was used in church documents “interchangeably” with “concubina.” [Werner, Janelle. “‘JUST AS THE PRIESTS HAVE THEIR WIVES’: PRIESTS AND CONCUBINES IN ENGLAND, 1375-1549. UNC, Chapel Hill. 2009. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598143.pdf] In case it wasn’t clear: _I am an enormous dork._.  
> Summary: In Which Things Get Disgustingly Domestic, Fast  
> Author’s Notes: For “Dear God” I said there had to be a regression, for any story that continues the Fleabag/Priest romance there has to be a violation of the premise that is laid out (a brief love affair—romantic or otherwise—can change people irrevocably [I would argue that the show is several types of love stories between her love and grief for Boo, her mother, sister, father, even Harry, and the priest is but another type of love story. I’ll spare you the 54 page paper my education trained me to produce]), for this story I am—as is so often the case—rearranging the space-time continuum to create the moments I need to express so I can wrap up my book hangover. 
> 
> Key: The show  
>  _”Dear God”_

“It’s God, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” His smile grew. “ _It’s all God. . I… You are God. I’m God, your sister, your parents; we’re all God. ‘…Whatsoever you do to even the least of these so you have done unto me.’ That feeling,” he clapped a hand to his chest as if he could place it within himself_ , “is always God, especially when it’s you.” _He took a couple of the fingers on her hand in his and lifted her palm to feel his heart beat beneath his ribs_ , the place where he’d located that feeling he couldn’t understand back beside the house. “ _My heart beats, with or without you. Your heart beats with or without me. That’s God. But…when we’re together my heart beats differently,” he pressed her hand more fully to him. “And that’s God too.”_ She could feel his wild and erratic beat through her palm matched hers in her chest. On that ledge of a bench, she felt the hope he had mentioned. Hope that it would somehow be them, whatever else there might be.

“So…?” She was afraid to ask but the edge was already biting into her arse and she didn’t think she could take it for the better part of an hour. 

“So,” he returned, holding on to her hand and gazing into her face. 

“Sorry, I need a bit more than that. It’s lovely, you’re great at the stand up and,” she waved her free hand, “the churchy bit but…”

“Crap at the boyfriendy bit?”

She took a breath. “Is that what this is?”

“I don’t know. Honestly. I don’t know what this is or where it’ll go, but I know it’s real. I know the love I have for God isn’t… it’s not less today; it’s more. It’s been more for weeks because… you.”

“So…” She looked away, up wondering what he kept finding there. 

“So there is today.” She looked back to find him still gazing at her—a proper eyefucking—and listened to him breath and continue, “We’ll figure out tomorrow when it gets here and the next day. I’ll trust in God and you’ll…?”

“Get subscriptions to science journals presumably,” she offered and saw him smile. “Does this mean you’re not…” she looked at his collar.

He shifted towards her, brought their hands to his lap where he recommenced fiddling with her nail. “I am a servant of God. I don’t want that to change. It’s… It’s not a job. It’s my life. I thought it would be one specific life until… well, but you’re this lightning bolt. You’ve struck, but I’m still me. A bit singed but me.”

“Right.” She looked just to the left of him.

“Hey,” he said and tugged on her hand. “I want to see you,” he continued when her eyes snapped to his, “often. Just maybe not…” he made a face, pained and confused and something more, “in confession.”

“Ah, yes.” She tilted her head back to rest on the likely terribly dirty Perspex dusted with graffiti tags and let the memory play through. She felt his fingers trace the line of her neck. “Father, what if someone sees?”

“I know. That’s why no confession. Dark, quiet places, a bit too tempting,” he spoke with a voice full of promises as his finger slide across her skin. 

She got lost in his eyes again, the temptation that stitched between them. “The café is fairly well lit and occupied in the day.”

“Yes? Good. Then tomorrow. At the café.” He shifted, seemed to be sorting out how to hang on or let go and stand at the same time. He managed to stand and hold her hand properly.

“And tonight?”

“A bit dark and quiet and if this bus ever shows it’s likely to get a show.” She smiled, let it tell him what sort of show she’d like to give. “Ugh, don’t do that!” he shouted, “I’ll never make it.” He leaned in and kissed her, comparatively chaste and with only a little teeth. “Tomorrow,” he said pulling away, smiling, not letting go.

“Lipstick,” she returned because she’d visions of Pam asking when he got home. 

“Right,” he said still stretching their arms between them like primary school. She watched as he forced himself to turn around calling, “Tomorrow,” gleefully over his shoulder. 

“Lipstick,” she laughed after him and watched still as his elbow hinted he might escape Pam’s wrath for one night. 

When he was out of sight, she heard a scrabbling on the pavers.


	2. I.ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She’d pretend to read it more to slouch close to his shoulder and point at some out of context word on the page—“beneficed,” “stipendiary,” “rector,” “ecclesiastical”—while picking up and dropping off menus and dishes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: There’s a Christmas Special but it’ll be closer to the Epiphany when I post it.

“Lipstick,” she said straightening up from the kiss even as his thumb traced a path back and forth just beneath the hem of her shorts. The café had cleared for the lull and the dribs and drabs of passersby would keep them honest inside until it was time to close up. 

He’d been sat there in a corner, often sharing his table, for the better part of four hours. He’d watched her, her customers, and read some hugely dull looking tome. The couple of snippets she’d read over his shoulder were solidly church history and as such very untempting. She’d pretend to read it more to slouch close to his shoulder and point at some out of context word on the page—“beneficed,” “stipendiary,” “rector,” “ecclesiastical”—while picking up and dropping off menus and dishes. He’d taken to smirking and turning into her lips as she whispered them in his ear as though they were academic opinions on the text. 

She plopped down—disturbing his thumb—in order to swipe at the marks herself. “I should change the color. Something more neutral, less noticeable.”

“Don’t,” he countered, leaning towards her. “Not unless you want to. I like it,” he swiped at the smudges on her face, carefully tracing the lines of her mouth. “It suits you, brash and bright and warm. Do as you like but,” he shook his head, eyes soft on her lips, one hands curling around hers on his face.

“Not too much of the harlot then?”

“No, don’t,” he started like a pin had found him. “Don’t ever say that. Colors can’t mean that and this,” he squeezed her thumb in his fist, “it’ll never be that. Don’t even think it.”

His tone was so vehement that her mischievous streak perked up. “But what if it was… if I was?”

“A harlot? Well, that’s up to you but on top of running a café I don’t know where you’ll find the time for a really torrid love affair.”

“Isn’t that what this is?”

“A love affair? Absolutely,” he said kissed the soft pad of her palm. 

“Working on the torrid bit then?”

“No, I’m just an old priest, torrid’s a bit outside my bailiwick. But Nine Times Guy, I bet he’s up for it.” He said it with a laugh and a wide smile, no guile she could detect.

“Oh, God,” she slapped playfully at his shoulder. “Oh, that was awful. Are you mad?”

“I had nothing to hold you. I’d sent you away. You’re free to make your own choices. God’s pretty big on that actually.”

“Oh, um…” she couldn’t tell if this was all past tense or religion or present tense. “Is…is that still how you feel?”

“About God and free will?” he asked a little furrow in his brow.

“No, about… my free will,” she returned not entirely sure how to get to the issue.

He cocked his head. “You’re not asking me what I think you’re asking me.”

She laughed awkwardly and looked at his horrible book. “Would you still feel that way if I called him to come over tonight?”

He cleared his throat and shifted carefully in the chair. “Do you want to?”

“No!”

“Oh, fucking thank Christ.” He wiped his face rough with a hand. “That was unexpected.”

“This isn’t exactly a well-defined relationship though. Am I not to see anyone else? Are you?”

He glared at her a little affronted at the last. “I’m not interested in seeing anyone. I gave up romantic feelings a long time ago. Then you happened and I couldn’t stop myself.”

“You’ve broken the seal now. Is Pam next?”

“Pam!” He laughed.

“I don’t know. Seems about as sensical as your choices to me.” He pulled her akimbo hands to him, reeled her in and kissed her without even glancing at the window to be sure they weren’t about to get a visitor—honestly, he was shit at self-preservation and she’d have to do all the looking out for his parishioners catching them. 

“The only people I want in this are you and me.” He thought for a moment, “And God.”

“Okay… I didn’t realize God was into threeway, but I’m open to it.”

“Kinky,” he said, clearly not taking the blasphemy to heart, and she laughed as she kissed him.


	3. I.iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’ve seen that work on_ Emmerdale _loads of times._

He was reading another awful, dusty book and petting Hilary softly with one finger—she’d watched him absently pull a page from between the rodent’s teeth on more than one occasion—when she dropped the picture of her and Boo from the opening of the shop in front of him. 

He didn’t look up but reached out with a foot to bring her chair closer—no chill, this one, seriously; it was a miracle she hadn’t gotten a talking to from the pope or whomever. It took her hand on the page for him to fully return from whatever fascinating passage of the bible the book was about. 

“Hello,” he said and took in the emptiness of the shop and the graying light out the windows. “Oh, it’s late.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not ready to go?” He looked to the pinny. 

“No. I… need to tell you something.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked with concern still evident.

“Hilary.”

“She alright?” he asked craning around to get a better look at her face. “How can you tell if a guinea pig is looking peaky?”

“No, she’s fine. It’s… it’s her mum.”

“Oh.” She nodded pointedly at the frame. “Oh,” he looked at the picture, smiled around one corner of his mouth and said, “She never visits or I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s gone.” She wiped her palms on the pinny, and tried to keep her breathing steady. The pep talk she’d been giving herself for the last twenty minutes was almost all used up.

“Gone?”

“She died. Boo died.”

“Boo?” he queried with a quizzical tone.

“Theodosia Bouffard, late of this establishment.” She was twisted in knots inside and wasn’t sure how much longer into this she could hold things together.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said and worked his hand into the knot she’d made of hers. 

He watched her while she continued to look at the back of the frame that was still facing him but see the way her friend had died, the way she had betrayed her. 

“It was.”

“Hmm.”

“It was a loss. And it was my fault. I’m a shit and a coward and she died because of me.” The last was a sob and he was up and putting Hilary in the crate and wrapping himself around her.

“I don’t believe that,” he said stroking her hair and crouching painfully around the chair.

“It’s true.”

“I know you believe that, but I don’t for a second think you could have killed someone you seem to love so much.”

When she’d calmed a bit he rearranged them with her in his lap and made a play for her to add a comfortable armchair or a couch—something he’d said would be better for customers who liked long visits (himself) and she always rebutted with turn-over and budgeting and square footage. “May I ask what happened? Other than cowardice?”

“She had a neighbor. A hot one.” She said trying to put herself back into the calm façade she’d started with.

“Hotter than the hot priest?”

She smiled, “Yes, and less nosy.” He kissed her chin. “She was really into him, they dated, and I knew how much she liked him, that he liked her. But I… She’d gone to bed and we stayed up drinking at his apartment just down the hall from hers and… well.”

“Your split personality slipped in and you went on a killing spree?” he sid with more maniacal glee than was proper.

“No.” She huffed and swiped at the tear that escaped. “I fucked him,” she said with a shrug; his hand smoothed over her back. “I fucked him and I didn’t even feel bad about it. Not the next morning.” She was becoming over-aware of his hand on her back, in case it should still, or vanish. “Not even two days later. I didn’t think he’d tell her what happened. I thought he had just as much reason to keep it quiet as I did but…”

“What happened?”

“She found out. The him part, not me. She was devastated and wanted to hurt him and be with him at the same time. She came up with this plan: she was going to get injured and he’d rush to A&E to take care of her, guilty as shit and more devoted than ever and that would be the end of it.”

“I’ve seen that work on _Emmerdale_ loads of times.” He offered as though he could lighten her load. 

She found herself laughing and crying against him, her forehead nestled in his temple. “Not this time. She stepped into the bike lane. Thought she’d just get a broken arm but she landed in the roadway and she was run over.”

“Oh Christ,” he said and wrapped her tightly to him. 

“She was so scared but she wanted him back and when she stepped…” she sobbed against him.

“Fuck. You were there. You saw it happen.” His arms tightened further and she was so grateful that she hadn’t had to say more, to recount the way her body had flown or the sounds it had made under the wheels. 

“She was scared. She didn’t want to be alone and it was my fault. It was my fault. I’d done it.” She spoke in a rush around tears and gasps.

“Oh no. No,” he soothed as his hands stroked her. “It was an accident.”

“I fucked him. It wasn’t—”

“She died in an accident,” he stated baldly. “You hurt your friend and you never got to ask forgiveness or find out if you’d earn it, but her death was not your fault.” Yet, he spoke the last with empathy and softness.

“Not a punishment from God then?” she asked with a sniff.

He caught her eyes and looked straightforwardly into them. “Never,” he said.

“For my promiscuous ways.”

“No,” he said firmly. “God would not take your friend’s life to punish you.”

“Then why would he? She was a better person then me. Everyone thought so. A bit ditzy and terrible with money but people loved her. She was sweet and disarming and genuine and she should have lived,” she uttered with the tears fighting there way back to the fore. “Why didn’t she?”

“She sounds pretty wonderful,” he drew one hand down her back and another’s thumb swiped at her cheeks. “I can see why you loved her. I’m sorry you lost your friend.”

“You don’t have an answer, do you?” she demanded feeling angry with him, with his lack of answers.

“No,” he continued to stroke her face, back. “No one does.”

“All these books,” she spat flipping it closed on the table, ‘and all of this God and you still don’t have an answer. Then what bloody good is it?”

“Because it tells me that it means something,” he offered solemnly. “That there is a greater reason, a loving reason that I will never know and when something awful happens, when someone is hurting, that comforts me. Your pain isn’t for no reason, Boo’s pain that day wasn’t for nothing. And I have faith that the ultimate answer to all of it, all of it is love.”

“It sounds like bullshit,” she said feeling even the anger dissolving into tears.

“Maybe, just the opiate of the masses, but when my heart is breaking,” he looked into her eyes again and she could see that maybe his was as well, just a little, broken with hers for Boo and all the mistakes that had taken her life, “I ask for strength from God and I can stand up against it.”

They sat there a moment, him drying her face, her snuffling, before she said, “Did you ask about us?”

“Many,” he closed his eyes with feeling and maybe gallows humor, “many times.”

“And yet here you are,” she pointed out with a small sardonic smile.

“Yes. God in His infinite wisdom helped me see that this,” his thumb touched her bottom lip, her chin, “was not something to stand up against but somehow part of the plan.”

“Convenient,” she offered narrowing her eyes in suspicion and a little in delight.

He laughed as his eyes crinkled over a soft smile. “Believe me when I say this is far from convenient.”

“Fucked, huh?” she said, a gladness still a dim flicker inside her. 

“Completely fucked,” he returned.

“Changing your mind on that harlot question?”

“Unless,” he said face and tone changing, “and I means this from the deepest corners of my heart,” he put his hand over it, “that is the name of the lipstick I really don’t want to hear you ask if I connect you in any way to a harlot ever again. I don’t care how many orgasms you had with who when, even if there was money exchanged. The answer will always be no. I’ll say it again if you need but, really, always a no. Also covered in this are jezebel, tart, floozy, strumpet, bawd, whore, and any others with similar connotations that might at any time be mentioned.”

She loved him. She’d had that creeping suspicion, the conviction that it was absolutely love when she was sure he’d picked religion over her, and intermittently when she looked at him and that feeling burbled inside her. In the moment she almost said it, but then Stephanie was chewing at the screen again and they both turned to scold her and it was past, the moment but not the feeling gone.


	4. I.iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You dropped the tempo funny in the last bit, Father.”_

[clasp hand ] “Wonderful homily, Father.” [shake hand]

“Thank you, Mrs. Stone.” [release hand]

[clasp hand ] “Such a thoughtful treatise on the readings, Father.” [shake hand]

“Thank you, Thomas.” [release hand]

[clasp hand] “You dropped the tempo funny in the last bit, Father.” [shake hand]

“You. Get,” he swatted her out the door with the bulletin in his spare hand. “Cheeky.” [release hand]

It was fast enough no one else would have noticed. He kept to the rhythm of greeting his parishioners—[clasp hand] “Lovely service, Father.” [shake hand] “Thank you, Professor Craine” [release hand]— but it was all she was sure to get of him Sundays. The public bits were hard, but the rest of the parish were welcoming enough—no one seemed to care she was an atheist or had no idea what to do for long stretches of the mass (though that was less common as the weeks wore on)—and when he was done distributing Communion to the house- and hospital-bound, cleaning up from the day, he’d be on the phone with her. Texting—strictly no sexting, too potentially damning—calling, and sometimes showing up on her door step. 

They were still sorting that bit out. Sometimes they’d snog on the stoop like her parents wouldn’t let him in and sometimes they’d be naked in her bed in minutes. The sight of him on her doorstep had yet to do less than leave her breathless.


	5. I.v

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It was the most twisted up sexually she’d ever been..._

She was stood there at the door. She knew he was on his way over and she’d changed three times. She’d put on fancy knickers, changed back into joggers, and then there was the baby oil she’d just finished slathering on that was barely hidden under her trench. 

_Fuck._

She’d no idea what to plan for at moments like these, when she knew they would be properly alone. She wanted him all the time, but he seemed as content to touch her face and leave as fuck her senseless most days. She was tempted, always so tempted, to fall back into the old ways and just bombard him with sexiness and privacy until he cracked, keep him in an eggcup and bash him in the head again and again. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” she screamed running into and slamming the bedroom door. She stripped, tossed the joggers back on and made herself sit on the sofa. 

She’d no idea how to approach or where the line was for this strange version of priestly virtue they were playing with. There was sex but it seemed to be on option, not a given. Snogging and dry humping and her coming but not him where more common than him in her bed, naked. She still wanked to that morning, waking to see him there, bare beside her the way she’d left him, still as naked as he had left her. And it all left her so randy she’d no place to put it any more. 

The last thing she wanted was to push him and loose him to God because she was too much of a slapper when he was still barely coming into her flat twice a week. 

It was the most twisted up sexually she’d ever been, including that threesome she’d had where the wife’d eaten her arsehole while the husband had watched porn beside them of a couple—genders not entirely clear—dressed as Thor and Loki.

Even more perverse, he didn’t seem repressed at all even if the most he touched was a thumb stroke over her temple or if he ate her out for fifty minutes or came all over her tits. 

She was still sat there, on the sofa, more worked up than ever, pondering if she had time for a quick rubout before he arrived. She second guessed it so long that he twisted the bell and she opened the door glassy eyed and flushed and he asked if she was feeling alright. 

“Fine, Father, just so turned on I could come on a baby carrot. Cheers, thanks for asking.”

“ _Oh, fuck you_ ,” he said and pushed her down to the floor to test the theory. It took them three tries to kick the door closed.


	6. I.vi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Am I sick?” She couldn’t quite keep the smirk from her face._
> 
> _“Clearly, you keep letting me in the gate.” It was his turn to smirk._

She woke to him sitting on the bed beside her, fully dressed for priestly duty. The light was bright enough that it could be anywhere from six to ten in the summer morning. “You’re leaving.” He’d been in the night before but not in the mood to talk, not in the mood to do much besides be with her. Sex—long and quiet—and cuddling after—close and full of sighs—left her worried. If it had been Harry she would have broken up with him just to stop the sighing. As it wasn’t, she found herself trying to give him the space he so often gave her, to give him the calm presence he offered when her head was a mess. He seemed to still be in that place.

“Yeah, I need to get back,” he said.

“I’ll see you out,” she mumbled, shifting beneath the surprisingly plentiful covers.

“No, please stay.” He put a hand on her shoulder, his face ardent.

“It’s fine,” she stated but rubbed her face to wake up a bit more, try to piece together what had him acting strange. “We can work on our impression of—” she stopped when she noticed that her forehead was distinctly covered in something abnormal. Too smooth and thin to be saliva—an admirer licking her face had happened before—and when she looked at her hand whatever transferred was clear and shiny. “Wha—” She sniffed it and—thinking it was familiar (they did not get up to anything kinky the night before or even creative; could it be lube?)—she reached her tongue tentatively out to taste it.

“Don—” he started but it was too late and his face settled on amused chagrin.

“Is there a reason there is oil on my face? I don’t recall having enough drink for that to be the case but it is also possible that a bad batch of shrooms has come back to haunt me.”

Laughing, “Sorry, it was me. I probably should have waited and asked your permission but… I was going to leave as soon as I said goodbye.”

“Kink?”

“Umhmm, close. A blessing.”

“What?”

“It was a blessing.” She watched him blush, felt warmth spread in her chest. “I blessed you and prayed for your day. It’s just olive oil—well, blessed by the bishop and for the care of the sick.”

“Am I sick?” She couldn’t quite keep the smirk from her face. 

“Clearly, you keep letting me in the gate.” It was his turn to smirk. 

She rolled her eyes at him. “What’s going on?”

“I got an e-mail from my brother,” his face fell. “Dad’s not well. It’s… as you can imagine there is some family drama,” she watched his eyes trace her face, “and I would rather keep it, keep this,” he ran a finger across her hair line, “from getting pulled into that.”

“You don’t want me to meet them.”

He didn’t contradict her, but his face got more solemn. “The possle of nuns I think you can handle, but my immediate family are likelier to chew both of us up and spit us out in short order. I think I’d rather tell the Pope how much I like that thing you do,” he waggled his eyebrows.

“The toes?” 

He bit his bottom lip and nodded lasciviously. 

“You know they can’t change this. They don’t even know.” Their insular world was both incredibly well protected and incredibly vulnerable. “Claire doesn’t even know!”

“You haven’t told your sister?” He seemed as scandalized as she was hurt.

“You haven’t told your brother.”

“He’s a sex-offender,” he baldly stated, “who keeps thinking we might have that in common someday, yet that’s not the most disturbing part of our relationship.” She watched him wince theatrically. “Your sister is perfectly lovely.”

“Uhh, jury’s out.”

“What?” he seemed genuinely surprised. “You love your sister. You faked a very awkward miscarriage for her.”

“That’s what you do for sisters.” She watched his eyebrows address his hairline, knowing he could not say the same. “…when they aren’t pedophiles.”

They were quiet a moment and she shifted into a more comfortable position and he sorted the blankets around her, resituating himself in the process so his head was eye level with hers on the pillow. 

She hummed sleepily and asked, “What were the words?”

“What?” he stroked a finger over her again.

“The blessing. What’s the prayer?”

“You don’t mind then?” She shook her head. “Ah, well,” he spoke softly since they were so close together, “being duly ordained there’s some leeway there. I don’t know if I could say it again exactly. I jumbled together some psalms and daily prayers. Mostly just to ask to fortify you for your day, that you may rise up to meet challenges and evil with the strength of God at your back and His shield and sword in front of you.”

“Very war-like,” she returned in the same whispered quiet.

He placed his lips against the center of her forehead where she’d found the oil. “I’m feeling protective,” he said against her.

“Hmm, sure I can’t walk you out, kiss you goodbye, give you my own blessing?” she asked.

“No, really. I want to think of you tucked in and warm here.”

“And smelling like olive oil?” She smiled sleepily.

“Smelling like me,” he corrected.

“Hmm, I like that part.” She yawned and he kissed her chin. “And the nap part.”

“Sleep, love.” She let it happen, the evasion, the goodbye, the nap.


	7. I.vii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“If a movie on your sofa is special, I’m your guy.”_

She felt like an avid fan of the Homily podcast these days, or a frequent guest. They’d entered a bit of a holiday season and he was giving mass daily and they barely saw each other. She missed him, even as his voice rang through her mobile, animated and funny, charming and warm. She leaned into the feeling of it surrounding her, drifted there.

Suddenly she realized she’d no idea what he was saying. “What?”

“Sorry. I know it’s been shit,” he said, his voice rough.

“No, it’s fine. I zoned out a minute, lost the thread. Can you back up?”

He was silent a moment, then two, and her nerves filled the void. “It’s just the rest of this week, I promise. Then a wedding next. It’ll go back to me being boring in the café most days. Soon. I promise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know this, me being at church all the time is hard on you. It’s not the kind of relationship you’re used to.”

“Fuck off.” She was reacting to the strange tone the conversation had taken. They hadn’t had many of these moments. They’d mostly stuck to the whole tomorrow bit. This was the first time several tomorrows hadn’t landed them in the same spot for more than an hour. 

“I understand if you want me to try harder,” he said and it reminded her of many, many conversations with Harry where she’d been expected to say just the same thing.

“No, seriously,” this was wholly unacceptable. “Fuck off. You think I’m mad at you right now.”

“You aren’t?” His voice was the hurt kind of incredulous, like it might be a trick. 

“No,” she hoped the vehemence didn’t step over into protesting too much.

“You didn’t say anything.”

“No. But that…” She got a sort of stage fright when it came to these sorts of conversations—little wonder—and she bumbled. “I wasn’t sitting over here fuming. I was folding laundry.”

“Okay…”

“You don’t believe me.”

“You fold laundry with your hands. How did your ears get involved?” Which wasn’t an unfair point for him to make. 

“I was still listening to you!” She did protest that time.

“You were not. You have no idea what I said,” he said.

“How do you know?” she returned with a bit of her teenage snot.

“You’re absolute failure to respond.” The flatness of his tone indicated that he had tried to get her attention and failed. _Fuck._

“Okay, yes, fine. I wasn’t listening to the words exactly.”

“At all.” _Shit, what had he said?_

“I wasn’t mad.”

“I’m going to need more of an explanation,” he replied. “I can’t see you and I can’t tell how honest you’re being with me.”

“Thanks,” she spat sarcastically.

“I can review some of the highlights of varying levels of truth but it feels petty,” he returned with little fanfare but some humor. “I can usually tell when you’re not being honest; usually it’s for a good reason. Right now I have no idea if you were distracted because you were annoyed or fetching chocolate from down your shirt.”

“Fine, Jesus,” she capitulated poorly. “I was mooning, al-bloody-right? Like a school girl in socks with glitter pens, I was listening to the cadence of your voice and mooning over how beautiful you are and how much I miss the rest of you. I was hoping to keep that to myself but you bloody…”

“Well…” He trailed off in too neutral a tone to give much away.

“Yes?”

“Well, now I feel like a school boy in socks with glitter pens. I’ve even got the knees for it.”

“You…” she dissolved into laughter. “God, I love you.”

“Just a few more days,” he said when she’d quieted.

“How often does it get like this?” she asked far more sober.

“A few times a year. Christmas, Easter. Some other short stuff. There’s a Wednesday in February where it’ll feel like I’ve died and gone to the bad place,” he explained.

“I’ll feel like you’ve died?” Which was a terrifying proposition because she’d felt that sort of hollowing grief. 

“No, I’ll feel like I’ve died. I’ll be covered in ashes and dead on my feet and hungry and tired. Lent I’ll be around but grumpy; that’s fair to say.”

“So no special Valentine’s?” she joked in both relief and humor.

“If a movie on your sofa is special, I’m your guy.”

“Damnit,” she said with no real heat and a barely suppressed smirk.

“What now?” he asked as worried as before.

“You _are_ my guy.”

“Good, yes.” He heaved a sigh down the line. “Oh wait, does this come with some sort of vocal rendition?” His voice jumped and gave away his heartfelt excitement.

“What?”

“It would be very _Sister Act_! You can be the Mother Superior and I’ll be Bishop O’Hara.” His voice had risen at least one octave. 

“I find this turn in the conversation very disturbing,” she muttered searching her brain for anything about the film besides the _nuns_.

“Oh come on! Maggie Smith’s gorgeous! It’s not like I want _you_ to be Bishop O’Hara.”

“Does she even sing in that movie?” she asked somewhat bemused. 

The sudden silence worried her slightly. “That’s a good point!” he suddenly yelled and she couldn’t stop laughing. “You can’t be Sister Mary Roberts; you can’t pull off that kind of innocent.” She squawked in protest. “Sister Mary Patrick has potential. She’s saucy. But Sister Mary Lazarus, now that’s the ticket! Her dry wit and long legs are you all over,” he finished with relish and a little lascivious lilt.

“Oh God, how did I get stuck with you?” She wondered as she said it if it counted as a prayer in his book.

“You were a very naughty girl. In a church even!” he said cheerily.

“I thought God didn’t punish people for their misdeeds.”

“Oh no, this is the kind of naughty he rewards. Father Christmas, not so much.”


	8. I.viii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I want to sing terrible carols with you and talk to you about baby Jesus and—”_
> 
> _“Be so churchy I puke?” she asked._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Happy Christmas Special! And I got it in before the Epiphany. Now you’ll just have to be content rereading this bit for a week or two until I get through the next.

She’d told Claire who had considerately said she wouldn’t be telling Klare—though eventually she would because the man had done something to her normally reserved, cool sibling—or Dad. It all seemed to be a bit too good most of the time. Dad kept Godmother happy. Klare kept Claire happy. And she made time in mostly lit, mostly inhabited places so she and her boyfriend-priest wouldn’t call down the loving wrath of God by fucking too often in the wrong places. It was pretty much just her flat and pretty much only when they couldn’t make it another day. 

For as tactile a man as he was—she’d watched him finger a bible, himself, and her with the same ecstatic expression—he could drag himself away from her touch far better than any man or woman she’d previously fucked. There were times she’d close the door after he’d peeled himself off her and out of the flat to come on her hand while he’d still be close enough to hear her shouts—dirty boy, sometimes she could swear he was standing there waiting just to hear her. The domesticity had hit a bit of a wall. He rarely stayed over and generally only because they’d fucked themselves to exhaustion or because he was too emotionally wrung out to haul himself off to the rectory. 

God only knew what Pam thought. He swore she hadn’t addressed it with him, that her demeanor gave nothing away. Pam, along with the parish, hadn’t seemed to think anything amiss either. They responded in kind to his love and guidance—and she could vouch for his love of his congregation; she heard his worries over their woes, the council they sought, though he did keep the confessional “sacred” from her and refused to gossip completely—and were more and more involved as time wore on. She thought he might need her less, want her less when he was less lonely among the lot of them—he called them a flock but refused to let her make sheep jokes in public so she’d taken to thinking of them as his merry band—but the evidence of it had yet to appear. There may have been less time for her as there were more baptisms and catechisms and whatnot to handle but he still _saw_ all of her when they were together, pulled her close, and pointed out when she was trying to hide.

By Christmas Eve it still hadn’t happened and, while she had hoped to enjoy ogling the object of her affection in his fanciest vestments among the candles and well-loved carols alone, she found herself surrounded by people who might glean their true relationship. 

He did indeed look regal and officious—and nearly-orgasmic—leading the mass. His homily was delivered with perfection—it had taken them weeks and many drafts (she burned some, they were so terrible) and he’d given it three times that night already to more fair-weather Catholics than she’d previously wagered London housed—and the carols were off-key but that was mostly the loud bloke in the back who sounded like a foghorn trying to come. She was so turned on that it was hard not to wiggle in her seat. Every time she did, looking for relief or a better view, she bumped Claire or Godmother and earned a glare from each.

She was ready to pray for real—often during the kneeling parts of mass she recited lyrics from songs or sacrilegious prayers like “Dear God, Please let him be ready to fuck my brains out this evening or at least go down on me before he is too guilt-ridden to stay over.”—by the time he was giving the benediction, and he was having a hard time keeping his eyes on the room rather than preaching solely to her. 

It was a problem of her being there that they’d discussed. He didn’t want to totally banish her as sometimes it was the closest he could get to speaking with her in person. But his merry band of motely parishioners meant a lot to him, and he didn’t want to not give them the messages God had for them. To be fair, this bit was what he felt guilty-ridden over and not their utterly phenomenal, if occasional, sex. He worried that his need for her would keep him from being effective as their spiritual leader. That, he felt, would truly break his vow to God which he—increasingly—did not think was impinged on by being with her. 

She shifted again, was eyed scoldingly from both quarters, and was a bit cross that she’d got sat in the middle and could not claim the isle. Often as he walked down at the end he shook hands and she was a bit desperate to touch him—maybe too desperate; she might spoil all their discretion and suck him off in front of everyone. He still held her eyes and nodded, graciously peeling Godmother’s hands from his as he moved along, and not given a sign at all that he’d seen her mouth her apologies that she wasn’t alone.

As the crowd—massive, she’d never seen this many people in the church before; there was literally standing room only—shuffled out, they joined the herded company and she tried to fall to the back so she wouldn’t be pushed through shaking his hand by her family. It was all the touching she was going to be able to do through Boxing Day and she wanted it frantically. 

Of course Godmother took the longest, ignoring the back up of people to greet. Harold—the warty, ancient deacon—pulled her through against her will and the look of gratitude when he turned felt only for her. 

Suddenly it was time and the “Happy Christmas, Father,” wasn’t enough. The both of his hands around hers wasn’t enough. Then he jokingly said to them, “Remember to wash your hands as soon as you’re home. Flu season and I’m like typhoid Mary with all these hands shakes.”

“Happy Christmas, Father,” she said again because he was still shaking her hand and dashed a kiss against her cheek like he did for dotty Mrs. Rhiner before relinquishing her to Harold who tried to do the same—ew.

Before long she was in a cold lilo on the floor of the room where she’d slept as a girl—Godmother’s idea to have them all under one roof for the night before a party tomorrow and _Deux Klaires_ (a terrible nickname that turned Claire pink enough to prove she secretly loved it) returned to Finland. It was part of the reason that she wouldn’t be seeing him. He’d actually planned to sleep over—something that’d never been planned for before—because Pam would be too dead on her feet to notice. It had been the thing she most wanted for the holidays; until Godmother had struck, she was going to get it too. She’d even added insult to injury by inviting him to the party—but of course he couldn’t make it. 

She lay there too cold to picture taking those ridiculous layers off of him and finger herself, but too lonely not to replay the evening over and over. The trashy Regency romance of it all was appalling and she’d give up her virtue in a second if she could get him alone in a drawing room. The buzz of her phone was a welcome distraction, but she hadn’t worked up the fortitude to pull her hand out of the covers to fetch before it was ringing.

“Shit,” she spat in a hushed whisper because it was on full blast—in the vain hope that someone, anyone, would call during after-church drinks to be her excuse to leave the room. In her haste to grab it, the covers flung and so did the phone. Then she had to crawl across the glacial floor to pick it up at the last trill of the song.

“Hello,” she said breathy and high.

“Hi,” he breathed back.

“Hi,” she said looking around like she was about to be caught out by some parent or—horrors—roving nun.

“Happy Christmas.” He sounded like he wasn’t in the echoy church, nor was it the hollow sound of his room. 

“Where are you?”

“Tucked in under the covers waiting for Father Christmas,” she heard the sheets rustle around him, “like all the good little children. Why? Where are you?” he asked teasingly. 

“Sitting on an ice brick of a floor.” _Fucking freezing._

“Odd. Well, find a blanket and climb in with me. It’s much warmer under here.” She smiled. She loved this side of him, the little boy who might turn up and read her _Now We are Six_ on a dreary, slow day at the café, or make paper chains for the fronts, cart Hilary and Stephanie around making car or train or boat noises. 

She crawled under the covers—no heat from her previous visit in evidence—and as soon as she’d gone still against the squeaky plastic he started. “’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.” She let her eyes drift shut as her smile grew. Her mind filled in his arms around her, the old book in his hands—though maybe it was from memory. “The stockings were hung by the footboard with care in the hopes that Father Christmas soon would be there.”

She laughed. “Is this a translation then?”

“Shh. Listen or there’s no crackers for you.” His tone was just seriousness to be joking. She mimed buttoning her lip though there was no way for him to see. “My love was nestled all snug in my bed, while visions of sugar-plums danced in her head. My love in her kerchief, and I in my cap, had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap, when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter that I sprang from our bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.”

“Bloody cold enough in here. Close that fucking thing,” she interrupted.

“It’s not your turn yet,” he chastized. 

“Okay.”

“The moon on the breasts of my love gave a show,” she giggled, “and a luster of midday to objects below.”

“How dirty is this going to get?”

“Not at all dirty if you keep interrupting,” he chastened again with playful edge to his tone. 

“Oh, sorry,” she cleared her throat. “Please continue.”

“Behave,” she knew the his mock scolding of his voice. “When what to my wondering eyes did appear but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, with a little old driver so lively, so quick, I knew in a moment it must be—”

“Your dick?” she gasped. 

“ _I_ ’m the one making it dirty?” he asked with a laugh. 

She tittered—God help her—as quietly as she might before sobering. “No, sorry. I’ll stop. Go on.”

“I don’t know. I feel like my genius is being maligned,” he said and from his tone she pictured him wide-eyed, hand to his heart, face so earnest, that he can only be winding her up. 

“No, please.” She tried not to ruin it by laughing again. It felt so much like he was there under the covers, like if she reached out with her cold foot she’d find his warm one. She was overtired and a little delirious with missing him. “I’ll behave, Father, I promise.”

“Hey now,” he objected, “especially none of that. I have been Fathered more tonight than in maybe the whole rest of the year.” She bit her tongue rather than respond. “You’re going to be good?”

“As gold.”

“Right. Now…I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles,” he continued with mytical excitement she could imagine in his eyes, “his coursers then came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name. ‘Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer! and Vixen! On Comet! on Cupid! on Donner! and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!’ As the leaves that before the wild hurricanes fly, when they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky, so up to the housetop the coursers they flew, the sleigh full of toys and St. Nicholas too.”

“I love you,” she said with her head full of the vision, not sugar-plums but him, the shadows of children she wasn’t sure she’d care for, and his gorgeous love. That was so clear. If there were children, he’d love them—even if she was an utter shit mother—they’d be happy and cherished, and maybe have drinking problems but still. He’d love them all with this joyful fierceness he’d had for everything since she’d met him. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He was silent. The silence was so soft with both of them under blankets, clear almost. 

“You don’t have anything to say?” She asked just a smidge worried. 

“I just wanted to listen to it echo for a while,” he whispered.

“Oh.”

“I love you, too,” he said after another long pause. Like it was the first time—it wasn’t. “A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.”

“You’re skipping.”

“You’re being a good little mouse over there,” he reminded her. 

She smiled so hard her face hurt, chanted her _I love yous_ in her head this time.

“He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work and filled all the stockings then turned with a jerk, and laying a finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle and away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, ‘Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.’

She sighed, finally warming, curled around his voice in her ear.

“Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas.”

She fell asleep in the warm, quiet cocoon, his breathing so close, and woke up overheated with the imprint of her phone on her face. 

Godmother made a great deal of it in the kitchen, implying in every veiled way she could that the imprint was likely from a flask. It put her on edge and no Christmas check or amount of mimosas could put her back in the warm chrysalis she’d felt herself in the night before. She certainly hadn’t woken up a butterfly. 

Her next free breath was a good thirty minutes after she looked across the crowded parlor and saw him sitting on a chaise awkwardly attempting to learn some sign so he could include the very interesting Deaf friend. He met her eyes and her desire to be rude and yank him up to her room—not that anything of hers remained in it—nearly overtook her awareness of just where they were and who was around them. 

Still they were coming their brains out—a bit more tactfully—in her old closet, against discarded paintings, not more than twenty minutes later. 

When the haze had cleared a bit it was like she’d seen him for the first time. “You look awful.”

“Thank you! And you are welcome for the bloody marvelous orgasm as well.”

“Fuck you. Have you slept at all?”

“Couple hours, minutes, here and there. I’d be asleep just here,” he said with his head in her neck and her knees in his shoulders, half collapsed on the floor, “if you stop talking a tick.”

“Okay,” she said and stroked his hair. He really did look he might pass out if he didn’t get some rest.

“Christ,” he locked eyes with her, slightly aghast as he then looked at their state. “You do bloody love me.”

“Did you not believe me?” she asked considering being more offended than amused. 

“No, I did. I believed you,” he returned with a bit of a smile. “Did you believe me?”

“I did. I do. Every time.” She felt herself smiling nearly as wide as she had the night before under the bedclothes. 

“Fucked. So fucked.” He shook his head, wondering, smiling.

“You need to sleep.” She ran a hand through his hair. “You shouldn’t have come. I told you it’d be fine.”

“This is not at all how I want to sleep. And I wanted to,” he said vaguely. “I wanted so badly to see you and mass wasn’t enough. And with everyone.” She watched him working himself up into a state. “God, I’m sorry! What a way to treat you.”

“It’s all fine. I’m not hurt. I’m not angry. I’m so terrifically in love with you,” she stroked a hand down his cheek, “I can’t stand it.”

“And what can I give you for this love?” he went on, more wound than before. “Hiding in closets and running from congregants and lying to your father?” He let his head thunk against her. “So, _so_ fucked. I can’t do another Christmas like this. I want to sing terrible carols with you and talk to you about baby Jesus and—”

“Be so churchy I puke?” she asked.

“Yes!” His eyes were fever bright and comically wide. 

She laughed, everything about him—even the bits that mystified her—made her so happy. It was the most happy Christmas since before she was old enough to be truly jealous of Claire’s big girl gifts, before she’d lost her mum. 

“Alright. That bridge isn’t going to come up for a bit, so first… sleep. Not here. What did you have in mind?”

“Well….” He looked at them, bits bare and still sweaty from sex. “A bed version of this really. I may have over reacted.”

“I could do with more leg room.”

He kissed her knee. “How soon and easily do you think we can sneak out of here?”

“If we enlist Claire,” she plotted, “very quickly. After all she owes you for how distracting you were that barely anyone noticed her ditch the wedding.”

“Claire,” he kissed her knee more deeply, “best sister ever. Let’s do it.”


	9. I.ix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You write over this part every day. You might to do this with someone else... to make yourself part of_ those _night rituals, the morning routine, to build a life with that person but… I’ll never have that._

There was a spate of illnesses and christenings and drama but when they came out the other side of Ash Wednesday he was no grumpier but indeed more morose. There was something about it that made him less optimistic and romantic.

“It’s the trials of Christ. He barely survived it, and he was the bloody messiah.” He was a bit like a teenage boyfriend especially with the goth clothes and hoodies. 

He’d also taken to baring bits of his soul, his past, and his family. It was like he’d given up insulating her from it for Lent. So she could appreciate the way he burrowed into her flat, needed the space to be welcoming and enveloping, seemed starved for affectionate touch and nearness. 

This new knowledge was put into brighter relief because he’d begun to truly stay at her place. It wasn’t just a fucked-out in between. He’d not just a tooth brush but a shaver and socks and hair gel. She was still getting used to the shape of him beside her, so different than the others who had inhabited that space. 

One such quiet night he stood behind her, arms coming around her waist as she continued to scrub lotion up and down her arms, him resting his chin on the tight muscle that stretched between her shoulders. “This is magical,’ he said with his eyes on her in the mirror. 

“Me doing my hair and rubbing crème on my elbows?” she asked with her eyebrows raised.

“Alright,” he corrected, “it’s a bit demystifying, I admit, but entrancing all the same.” He followed the line of her in the mirror. “Now I get to know how you do it, how you put on pajamas and brush your teeth. It’s glorious.”

“Better than how I undress you and put on condoms?” Because the way he was talking she was starting to wonder. 

He laughed, stroked her with his chin, eyes crinkled but ever watchful, even in reflection. “That’s great too but these are the bits I…” He looked away, swallowed. “You write over this part every day. You might to do this with someone else,” his attention was back on them in the mirror, face serious just behind her shoulder—that Lenten moroseness coming out, “to make yourself part of _those_ night rituals, the morning routine, to build a life with that person but… I’ll never have that. Not really. Not with Pam, or some new Father Patrick. When I’m lonely and brushing my teeth I’ll picture you there, beside me brushing yours and now I’ll know.” He kissed her, shirt over shoulder. “I’ll know you tilt your head back,” he put his forehead under her chin, exposing her neck to rub his lips against, “rather than spit until the very end.” He kissed the crux of her neck. “All these little details I get to keep and dust off when I need you and you’re not there.”

Things grew heated between them and soon her slick hands were moisturizing his face as a byproduct of pulling him deeper, devouring him more fully. Her pajamas hit the floor just before she shoved his boxers the rest of the way down with her foot and two instants before his penis filled her canal to the point of gasping. She clung to him inside and out as he jerkingly moved them from the counter to the bed. 

They rocked together desperately, her short nails scratching his back, his teeth scoring her shoulder, and when they’d both come against each other she nipped his ear and said, “You do realize that now I have to go do my hair again?”

“All part of the plan. Now I get to watch,” he drew a hand down her. 

“Hmmm,” she hummed at him and thought of the vicious, delicious cycle that could easily form.


	10. I.x

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Oh, hello… Father, isn’t it?_

The night out with Belinda is nearly perfectly timed for disaster. Belinda’s high off a well-closed deal and needs little alcohol to keep her bumping along gayly whereas for the other, she’s scraping the bottom of every glass to chase away the sting of a fight with her godmother that was had through her father in which all she wanted to scream was “Yeah, well, your priest bloody loves _me_ , so lick your own hole!” In domino effect she was then short and annoyed with her lover for two days and refused to speak to him on the third like the stunted grownup she believed all humans to ultimately be. So the joy and alcohol consumption were both a bit one sided all night. 

Belinda found herself pouring her friend into a car and then having it wait while she walked said friend inside. Belinda also found herself having a bit of a shock when she walked into a warmly lit room with a warmly dressed man curled up on the sofa, clearly at home with his state. Her second shock came when she recognized him as the man who had been introduced to her as a priest at a rather unpleasant party where her friend’s stepmother tried to collect her like a baseball card—Belinda was not a “very assertive lesbian friend—in business, you know” for anyone who wasn’t some sort of work contact to be put up with.

“Oh, hello… Father, isn’t it?”

For his part he seemed just as incapable of speaking as her friend was of shutting up. A constant stream of increasingly flagrant curse words filled the space around the trio.

“I can,” he said reaching a bit for her friend like one would for a crying toddler and nodding his head back in the direction of the rest of the flat, “bed.”

“I can take her.”

“Ah,” he seemed clearly uncomfortable at the idea of her deeper into the house.

“ _Fuck_ ,” the woman in question spat with particular ferocity and threw herself into the nest already built up on the sofa.

The Father looked at Belinda’s friend with his eyebrows alarmingly raised—even higher than they had been when he realized they’d come in the door together. He looked back to Belinda and shuffled his hands a bit as he put them into the pockets of his loose joggers. “Shall I brew up some tea?”

“Yes, that might be best. I’ll just let the taxi go.” Belinda walked out the door wishing she was the type of person to climb into the cab and speed away, never having to deal with the scene she’d left behind her again. Still there seemed to be a good story here and if there was one thing Belinda had learned about her friend it was that stories never ended predictably. 

“Fuck,” she muttered as she approached the cabbie. Her post-deal high was ebbing and she doubted this particular story was going to bring it back.

Later, ensconced on a tidied couch with the priest—still in joggers—and her friend—newly changed out of the sexpot dress she’d worn, much to Belinda’s enjoyment, viciously around the bars that night—Belinda kept a neutral face, sipped her sweet peppermint tea, and listened to the staid, detail-less story the Father pattered out. 

She quietly contemplated how to word her next contribution to the night’s events, and decided on, “I am sure that is the most blameless way you could think of to explain why you’re to be found on a parishioner’s sofa at one in the morning, clearly very at home, but you should know that I don’t buy a word of it. One, I have met this gorgeous firecracker before and two, I’m not nearly so stupid as to think that neither one of you hasn’t fucked up in some extravagant way, since that is by far the most delicious thing people do. Now,” she said rising, “I am going to find something passable to drink and you,” she pointed at her friend, “are going to spit it out or I’ll know why.”

As Belinda walked away in search of the kitchen and a hopefully well-stocked shelf of bottles she heard her friend mutter, “Fuck,” and the priest begin to laugh. 

“Well, she’s your friend.”

Beverages—a dusty half bottle of mid-range scotch (“We’re a whiskey household these days”)—and reactive fear sorted, Belinda settled in for the animated, disaster of a story of alarming anecdotes and near misses and a bizarre number of torturous parties (mostly the ghastly stepmother’s doing).

“I don’t understand. There’s no possible way the woman doesn’t know she’s an utter zoilist triptaker.”

The priest rolled into his love, laughing and unable to stay quite upright, even on the sofa. “I usually just call her a cunt,” she said, a hand migrating thoughtlessly to her lover’s hair.

“ _I_ rather like cunts,” Belinda returned. “It’s a far greater compliment than the gnashgab deserves. I bet she’s terrible at eating pussy. Therefore doubly not worthy of being called a cunt.” Belinda kept an eye on the Father and didn’t see him flinch or sober at her language which were points in his favor as a person if not necessarily as a man of God. 

“Personally,” he said, “I can’t understand that bit.”

“A fan of pussy, are you?” she asked. The affirmative looks she received from both the priest and her friend earned him another human point. “Does God not have feelings about that? I recall hearing something as a child to the effect of ‘bad, don’t.’”

“Jesus is pretty quiet on oral sex, nearly silent on sex in general, but definitely against the objectifying gaze.” He sighed and pulled himself upright, switching gears it seemed from relaxed boyfriend to theologizing priest. “The old testament and Catholic doctrine are more complicated, even at odds with one another depending on your perspective. Modern Jewish interpretation is that the care of the partner includes orgasm not directly related to creation of progeny but then they are also, in the reform, comfortable with pre-marital sex though not extramarital sex. They’ve been studying those passages for a few thousand years longer than the Catholics so I give them a bit of deference.”

“Very ecumenical of you, Father.” He shrugged. “But in your own faith?”

“There is my faith and then there is the dictates of my religion. The dictates of my religion is that spilling any seed outside of a marriage bed in which the sole purpose is to make children is sin and worthy of confession, penance. However, any marriage counselor will tell you that is tripe. If the goal of Christian and Catholic union is to multiply the flock of God then those unions must be healthy and fulfilling relationships so that the children can grow up to know and understand unconditional love as part of not just God’s family but their own. That is God’s will. ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Homes without love can be overcome,” Belinda watched her friend reach out to stroke him, “but that it not the home or the childhood God wants for us.”

“So masturbation… self-abuse?” She meant to keep pressing for several reasons not the least of which was to protect her friend from some problematically abusive power dynamic.

He looked at her and solemnly said, “For us to love one another as He loves us, we have to love ourselves as He loves us.” Her friend’s face twitched behind him and she wondered what unspoken reference was being made.

She tried not to let her shock at the blunt meaning behind his subtle phrasing show. “And this is what your religion tells you?”

“This is the understanding of God my faith has led me to.” She watched the steadiness in his eyes and distrusted it.

“So you disagree with the religion you preach?” she asked trying to catch him in his semantics and distinction between religion and faith which to her always seemed a way of loving the sin and punishing the sinner.

“I disagree with some interpretations of scripture and the resulting doctrines. A lot of the new and old testament passages talk about the desires of the flesh in the context of other groups. Don’t be like the gentiles, don’t be like the Pharisees or the Thessalonians, the Babylonians, the Sodomites—not gays but actual people from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. A lot of these things get twisted by time and the person reading them if you forget who the comparison was against.”

“Okay, so don’t be a royal pain but it’s different based on the Royal you point to,” she summarized to show she’s following, not necessarily that she agreed. She didn’t feel inclined to be lenient here.

“A bit. So time: that passage in Leviticus that American’s like to trot out about abominations?” He waved a hand and leaned forward over his knees.

“Oh, I know it,” Belinda felt it as though it were still being shouted at her from the roadway as she walked down the sidewalk holding her girlfriend’s hand. 

“If you place it historically and look at different translations of the text it’s about pedophilia and bestiality which I think we can both agree are abominations that—if allowed—would infect the society around it with more than just those two ills.” His human points continued to mount but she couldn’t see him doing well in what she understood of the church. Surely it was only a matter of time until he was forced to bend to the shaming will of organized religion—cutting her friend off or pressuring her deeper into the clerical closet—or left. 

“I wish there were more like you but…” she waved the hand holding the tumbler of whiskey.

“There are!” he chirped as he sat up and reached out as thought to stop her assuming ill of all clerics. “I know there are a lot of people who are afraid of faith and of religion because of the old ideas, understandably. Because they are used to the nun with a switch or the smell of brimstone used to keep them in line but that’s not God,” he said the enthusiasm she did not feel at half three in the morning. “It’s man, man’s fear, man’s hurt, and man’s hate for himself and what he sees of himself in others.” His eyes lit up further and he reached out as he leant farther out. “I used to be one of them. 

“I felt lost and angry and hurt and alone,” he continued. “I used anything I could get my hands on—money, people, my fists—to convince myself that I,” he jabbed himself, “was the reason, that there was nothing I could do to feel differently. And then I found God, not just the church, but the infinite love and peace of God. I can’t hold what I was taught or how I felt against Him any more than I can hold how you feel against you. The world is dark and cruel and has been for a long time. It is my hope that by hearing and preaching God’s love and not wrath and damnation, people will feel faith again even if they can’t get past the worst of what religion has offered. To feel the comfort and love that surrounds us even in the worst of times can lift the spirit past tremendous despair. Can make the world less cruel and dark.”

Belinda could feel the love and passion in his words, the truth he felt in them even if she did not, could not accept that there was a power in the universe that knew and accepted the terrible things she’d seen and heard. “Well, is that what this is then?” she nodded to her friend who—half-sobered—still seemed entranced by him, or worse, ensorcelled. “Are you using what clearly must be phenomenal orgasms to convince my friend to have faith in God even if you can’t get her to buy into religion?”

Said friend sat up a bit straighter, the look on her face indicating she’d caught the accusatory note to Belinda’s question. 

The father smiled, elbows on his knees, mischievous glint in his eyes. “Romans 14:23.”

Belinda quirked her head at him, not well-versed enough to know the lines.

“Whosoever has doubts is condemned if he eats because his eating is not from faith, and everything that does not come from faith is sin.”

She unwittingly took a breath to speak but only turned her head further in confusion.

“Sorry,” he looked to both women, “I thought we were still talking about eating pussy.”

Belinda laughed and shook her head. “I do not know what to make of you, Father.”

“That’s alright,” he said, wrapping a hand around his lover’s shin. “I’d like to give you more opportunities to try.” She watched his eyes drift over as well. “If that’s alright with you.”

Belinda looked between them, could see how they had made themselves a united front in supplicating their relationship before her, begging not to be outed without ever saying the words. This was the closest they had come all night, even during that stilted parade of half-truths. 

“Well, I shall have to accept as there aren’t many who enjoy my sex-positive, old-fashioned insults.”

“I really do.” He nodded vigorously.

“Nerds,” her friend called them both, smiling


	11. I.xi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“My father’s in hospital,” he answered several of her questions and explained far more than he’d realized she was asking._

When she came back from the café he was home (he’d called it that himself regularly: “I’ll meet you at home,” “Let’s go home,” “Take that home for me,” etc.) digging into the sofa and pulling things apart.

“Lose something?”

“Yeah,” he bit out.

“Can I help?’

“No.” His voice was dismissive and occupied and she waited to see if he’d welcome her in his usual way. She dropped her bag and the post on the pile of general disorder they both lived with still waiting to see just how off-kilter he was. “What?” he eventually turned to look at her for the first time since she’d arrived.

She shook her head, “What did you lose?”

“My gran’s rosary.”

She tilted her head. He had several of them and she wasn’t sure the stories behind them save the one he carried during confession. 

“The blue glass one. I can’t find it anywhere,” he explained, back to looking, “and I’ve got to pack it.”

“Pack?”

“Yes, my flight leaves in a few hours and it’s not at mine.” Her worry deepened. He hadn’t mentioned anything about travel and the rectory had been called just that, as though it was a youth hostel, for nearly two months. 

“Flight?”

“Dublin. Have you seen it or not?” he barked exasperated seemingly at her and the settee for failing to turn it up. 

“Not. What’s in Dublin?”

“My father’s in hospital,” he answered several of her questions and explained far more than he’d realized she was asking. 

“I’ll check the bedroom.”

“I’ve looked there.”

“And I’ll look again and then the kitchen. If it’s here we’ll find it.” She left her coat on, figuring she’d have to walk him out soon to make his flight. “What are you flying?” she called out to him from the disaster he’d made the not-overly-tidy bedroom.

“Ryan,” he shouted back and she heard heavy furniture move against the wood. 

“Woof,” she muttered to herself, loathing it’s miniscule legroom and no baggage freebies. It meant Stansted though instead of Heathrow, Gatwick, or Luton and that he was likely more pressed for time then he realized because he wasn’t counting in the trip to Liverpool St at that time of day.

She pulled the bed from the wall—he prayed in bed a lot as a matter of course but often when he couldn’t sleep or was worried about a parishioner in specific—and didn’t see it among the storage or dust bunnies. She up-ended every pillow, shook out all the bedclothes, and then made for the washing. He’d been through it once given the outsized pile. She found a couple hair ties, an earring, a few white tabs, and as she shook out the jumper of his she most preferred to wear when he was stuck at the rectory she heard a soft clatter but saw nothing fall. She turned it round, inside out, and found herself gingerly trying to unhook the beads from the yarn without making the snag too much worse. 

“Found it,” she called during the surgical operation only to find him at her elbow a moment later.

He took that bit of her in hand and guided her round to face him. She barely saw his upset face before he had both arms around her. “Thank you,” he said wetly into her shoulder. 

“You’re welcome.”

He clung for a bit, so she did too, trying to bank some closeness for however long he might be in Dublin. “When’s your flight?”

“No idea,” he half laughed against her. She carded a hand through his hair and felt him sigh against her. “Sorry,” he said pulling back a bit.

“It’s alright. Clearly it’s very important to you.”

“ _You’re_ very important to me,” He corrected.

She smiled at him, kissed his cheek. “It’ll be alright. You’ll see them, and you’ll come back.”

“I wish you could be there.” He drew a hand up and down her back.

“Hmm, show me all the places you used to hide and sneak a smoke?”

He smiled a bit against her cheek. “Mostly to be able to hold you when I feel like punching them.”

“Not terribly priesty.” She made a she doubted he could see, but knew he could hear.

“No,” he laughed and squeezed her tighter. “Generally we are discouraged from brawling.”

“Not like my family then.”

He squeezed himself against her again. “I’m going to miss you.”

She kissed his neck. “I won’t be far. If you need I can shut up the café and stand at the back like some creepy ex-girlfriend, or illegitimate child.”

“Thank you for offering. Hopefully it won’t come to that.” His smile was small, pained.

“Let’s get you to the airport then. Everything else all packed?”

“Yeah,” he grabbed the jumper—rosary still attached—and started shoving it into the bag on the floor.

“Oh, no,” she stayed him. “The rosary can go but the knitwear stays. We’ve grown quiet attached and I can’t possibly do without both of you,” she said reaching in and pulling it out more carefully. “I’ll untangle it. You check your flight.”


	12. I.xii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We are not going to have sex.” He has on a stern face—but she can’t quite decode that either._
> 
> _"...You always say that right before we have sex.”_
> 
> _“I… we are absolutely not going to have sex...”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which they are absolutely not going to have sex

Her family can sit and roast for all she cares. They’re spiteful and ignorant and it would doubtlessly make her happier if she’d been magically born just as she is from the forehead of some god, like Athena. She’s furious and slamming bits and tat about the kitchen, crying mostly against her will, and _needs_. Needs something from someone, somewhere only she doesn’t do that anymore. So she needs something from the only person she’s let close since Boo… needs something he possibly can’t give—scary in its own right and her heads too done in to parse it—and then he asks from right beside her with his voice all wonky and weird and _hot_ , “Do you trust me?”

“That question usually precedes really kinky sex,” she says wiping her face, sniffing hard, willing away the excess water in her eye sockets.

“We are not going to have sex.” He has on a stern face—but she can’t quite decode that either.

She laughs and maybe the worst of her anguish has been taken. “You always say that right before we have sex.”

“I… we are absolutely not going to have sex,” his hands, already drying the tears that will not evaporate from her ducts, turn her face further towards his. “I swear to God.” There’s no middle ground when he says that. He’s either deadly serious or bonkers off the wall. 

“I trust you.” 

He smiles at her, pulls her to him, saying, “Alright, down you go.”

He’s clearly having her kneel next to the cabinets. She looks at him to let him know how it looks to her and his face nearly folds in half it’s so firm. 

“Look, I’m not saying you on your knees isn’t a particular weakness of mine, but this is not that so…”

“Mind out of the gutter, Father, I promise.” Because there are parts of her that are still wrung out, shaky, ready to bawl again at the slightest provocation. 

“I don’t know it’s entirely possible, but I’ll take it.” He’s beside her, holding her hand, and he too moves to kneel. In a moment he’s opposite her, her folded hands within his. “Close your eyes,” he says, face so close it wouldn’t be much work to kiss him, end this panto she’s half sure will result in her insulting his faith so incontrovertibly he’ll leave. “I’m serious,” he leans his head against hers. “Closed.”

She complies and sighs—terrified of where this is heading and wishing he’d just kept holding her. 

“Now, I want you to picture God—”

“Bearded old man in the sky, check!” she interjects quickly, a wish to wriggle away from this whole bit.

“No, not that bloody comic strip God but… the universe. Alright? Picture the nebulas and stars and galaxies. Huge, expansive, and unknowable in any single lifetime. Stretching beyond imagining, vast, and yet without it you, I, we’d not exist. Got it?”

She had, clear as day in her head from all the telescope and satellite photos and space movie sequences. “Yes,” she says with a nod.

“Alright and now that pain you’re feeling, that hurt that’s jammed in your ribs and cutting you up,” she feels the tears return, “Ask that universe please. ‘Please help me. Please take this and help me bear it, even just a little.’”

She tries to push that thought out, and instead envisions pushing out the shame she feels, the loss into the beautiful nebula she’s imagining. 

“Say it.”

She opens her mouth, but only squeaks emerge. 

“Say it. Say ‘Please.’ That’s it, just say please.”

She hiccups on a sob she didn’t know was coming and gasps “Please,” collapsing into him even as one of his arms comes around her to hold her up. 

“Ask again,” he says softly in her ear while the agony seems to pour out of her. 

“P-p-p-p-lease,” she finally stutters out as her lips tremble.

“What do you need, love?” He kisses her face, both arms around her—the only thing keeping her up—rocking her.

“Help,” she cries. “Help. Help me. Please.” She finally seems to catch a full breath in her lungs and says, “Help me, God please.”

He’s still kissing her head, pulling her weight further into him. She’s in his lap being stroked and loved, and comforted as she continues to howl into his neck. 

Later the hiccupping sobs will be sniffles and it will be more than her face and chest that is sore—there’s only so long one can sit on the floor even with a lovely priest to snuggle you—and she will ask: “Was the kneeling really necessary? Couldn’t we have done that from the sofa?”

She’ll feel him smile against her—so familiar a feeling—and hear the rumble of his voice—low and phlegmy like he’d been crying with her (probably was, the sweet bastard)—when he says, “It absolutely was. You’re far too proud to humble yourself from the cozy settee, to admit you needed the help. You’d talk yourself out of meaning it.” And he won’t be wrong. She’ll have done it many times before.

“Are you going to be smug?” she’ll ask.

“Smug?”

“You got your atheist bed bunny to pray,” she’ll be only a third joking.

He’ll roll his eyes, never fond of how she demotes herself, them, when she’s feeling vulnerable, and let it go—not willing to push her to the point she’ll resist. “Hopeful. Always hopeful.”

“What do you hope for?”

“That you will find joy and peace and love and that I’ll get to see it happen.”

“You want me to _find_ love?” she’ll ask—unfond in her turn.

“Preferably with me,” he’ll say kissing her damp temple, “but if it is not God’s plan for us to be that love then I hope I get to see you so well loved it’s beyond disgusting.”

“Ugh, priests! Why can’t you just pray that I love you? Make the whole thing easier.”

“Well, what if the answer is no? ‘Dear God, Let her love me as much as I love her.’ ‘Dear Moron, No. Fuck off. Kindly, the Lord.’ Thanks, I’ll pass.”

“Is that how he usually responds?” she’ll laugh.

“He’s a bit vague in his post, it’s true,” he’ll say.

“Did he respond to me?” She’ll be hesitant about the answer, not wanting to pin him down and not wanting to hope too much that the lessening of hurt might be real—maybe the cathartic product of her crying jag or the physical ministrations of her lover—and not just some psychosomatic placebo effect of his happy participation in a mass delusion. 

“Quite clearly I’m afraid,” he’ll whisper, carding through her hair with his fingers.

“’Dear atheist, Deal with your shit?’”

“’Dear, lovely woman,’” he’ll say with his cheek to her hair and a tightening of his arms. “’Okay.’”

“What? That’s ridiculous. I get an okay?” She’ll be aghast.

“You asked for help, you got help.” 

“I _helped myself_ to a good cry.”

“Exactly.” He’ll smile like he’s solved the mysteries of the universe for her and put a bow on. When she’ll stomp away muttering about nonsensical self-fulfilling prophecies, he’ll look up and mouth, “Thank you” into the universe of nebulas and stars and galaxies that is unknowable in a single lifetime.


	13. I.xiii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Boyish urchin with a dirty face? Undoubtedly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moved some stuff into Act II for writerly reasons. Also, had a shit week. Let me know if you need to hire an English teacher for 2021-2022. [sigh]

She wakes to him sitting up in bed. This is not uncommon; he’s not an easy sleeper for all he can be a layabout (particularly when the washing up needs doing). The surprise comes when she sees he is not gazing curiously at the prayer book open in his lap—normal—but the picture in a frame that regularly sits on the bureau half hid by mounds of discarded jewelry and clothing, maybe clean knickers she’s yet to put away. 

She puzzles it out. 

Why that picture? It’s been there for ages, far longer than he’s been in her bed. In fact the only people it doesn’t predate who have been in this room are Claire and… 

She sighs. Just Claire now. Boo’d never been to this flat. 

The sigh alerts him and he glances over, eyebrow raised in greeting.

“What are you looking at,” she croaks in a first-words-of-the-day voice.

“You,” he says. “I think.” After a moment he turns the frame towards her, points to the child with the short curlicued mop and says “That” like it’s hard evidence. “Is you,” he finishes after another beat. 

“Boyish urchin with a dirty face? Undoubtedly.” 

She doesn’t need to look at the photo. 

“So this person?” he must be pointing at her mother but she doesn’t know because she’s turned away and thinking about coffee. The sun’s not up, Father Nosikins clearly never fell asleep, and she’s got to open up the café today. The amount of caffeine will have to be tremendous. 

“She?” No response. “She looks so like Claire and sort of like you. Your mum? I can’t believe I’ve never seen a picture of your mum.” 

He’s running on second wave adrenaline (nearly as dangerous as fourth wave but less likely to involve accidental injury) and she’s running on… 4:45?… four hours of sleep.

“She looks so happy, like she can’t help but smile and be fascinated. You of course are mid-story. How old are you anyway?” His voice is still animated and happy. He hasn’t a clue of her mood or just how close she is to not answering. He’s usually faster on the uptake. That’s the no-sleep talking.

“No idea,” she says eventually, annoyedly putting her feet on the cold wood floor and thinking that this is likely the last time today they won’t be throbbing. 

“What? Really? I keep thinking you have to be four or five—that hair, those cheeks—but I never see pictures of you before uni when you basically look exactly like you do now. You could be eight though. Maybe you didn’t hit your height until nine or ten. Maybe your mum was tall and the close up only makes you look smaller. Honestly you could say fifteen and I would only be mildly shocked.”

She ignores his loops of logic and reasoning and hopes there are still unused grounds from the day before or she may run the grinder in his ear to shut him up because of course he’s crawling over and out her side of the bed, following her to the bloody kitchen. _Take over the caffeine provisions if you want to live._

He’s still talking—saying God knows what—but she can’t hear him over the buzz in her head as she goes through the steps damning him and his French press at every step. 

He talks as he takes down two mugs. _You can’t have any, wanker._

He talks as he get out the milk.

He talks as he get out the little canister of extra chunky raw sugar he likes and the chocolate sauce he knows she thinks is a treat. _Ah-ha! You did catch one of the dozen glowers sent your way._

He talks as he prepares both cups in their individual ways.

And she hears none of it. It’s like the grinder is on inside her head. It’s so loud she doesn’t notice the pot boiling and he’s the one who takes it and pours it—stirring with the designated chopstick—slowly around the grounds. He even rinses the chopstick and puts it back for use tomorrow. 

She can’t even tell if he’s stopped talking or is still at it as she sort of gazes out the window at the gray walls of the mews beyond. She’s in some half dream state until he brushes her hair back behind her ear and she turns to look at him. Whatever is on her face has him reaching out and pulling her in. 

With her ear to his cheek she can tell he’s shut up but the noise in her head hasn’t—indistinct, like movie café chatter—but it’s still better. Strung out and pissy in his arms absolutely trounces the alternative. Even if his conversation started it off. Being tired, alone in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to brew? Also trounced. 

He rocks them, humming something soft and slow. She realizes it’s a very sedate, bluesy version of the _Miranda_ tune. She smiles, laughs against her will.

“There you are. Okay?” He asks; he truly asks not only because he doesn’t know but because he wants to as well. 

“Yeah,” she mutters still rocking with him, pulling in tighter, fitting her face to his neck— _his glorious neck_. “Sorry. Bit tired and a grouch it seems.”

“S’alright. That movie was ages. Shouldn’t have started it so late.”

She shrugs, “We wanted to.”

“True. Like heathens.” She pulls back to look at him askance. “And naughty children.” He kisses her chin, nose. Smiles even though she knows her face is not currently shining with love nor happiness. 

She wants to ask who he is, why he’s there but she knows. He loves her. Stink face and morning moods are better than no her at all just as his imaginary bestie and cheerful neediness far outstrip being alone with strangers (or worse yet, people she knows). 

“I do want to know about the photograph.” It’s simple but his face is against her neck this time and the coffee smells of enough caffeine to prevent the worst from happening (her hands squeezing the life out of his beautiful neck).

“I know.”

“You’ll tell me?” he actually asks.

Part of her wants to scoff at him—how could he think she wouldn’t—but she knows herself better, knows he knows her nearly as well (better in some instances), so she doesn’t. “Yes,” she answers when she’s let her head rest against his, her eyes drift shut, a micro-sleep which could easily become her asleep on her feet. 

“Thank you,” he says with his lips to her skin like he’s thanking her dermal cells individually or perhaps in groups of ten hundred. “Coffee’s ready,” he says.

“Mmm,” she groans. “Sleep.”

“Okay.” He settles in more, secures his arms better, and pushes more of her weight into the worktop. 

_Bloody bastard._ “Uhhun,” she squeals, “no,” pushes him back, “café!”

“Damn,” he let’s her go… almost. “I just wanted a bit of snuggle.”

“You would have tucked me right back in and let me sleep ‘til noon, you horrible influence,” she shouted over her shoulder. 

“That’s what I said: a bit of a snuggle!” he hollered back. 

Suddenly there’s a thudding on the wall. “Sorry!” they both shout at the neighbors before five in the morning.


End file.
